Vort3x, published on the 15th of each month, aims to pick out significant developments in the intersection of computers, freedom, privacy, and security for friends near and far. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect those of Cybersalon, either individually or collectively.
Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman.
Contents: Cybersalon events | News | Features | Diary
Cybersalon Events
The Majority Myth: How Voting Really Works
Newspeak House – London
20th May 7pm
TechUK event
20th May 3-5pm
London – deep dive into the justice dimension of Data Sharing, with insight from the Ministry of Justice’s Data
NEWS
“Facewatch” Errors Penalize Innocent Shoppers
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People in the UK are being misidentified and asked to leave shops due to errors made by the live facial recognition system supplied by “Facewatch”, Jessica Murray reports at the Guardian. Facewatch claims its system has a 99.98% accuracy rate; in April 2026 it send 50,288 alerts of “known offenders” to shops such as Spar, Sports Direct, and many others who subscribe. Those who have been wrongly identified say they are offered no support or advice on how to complain or seek redress.
Comment: “Facewatch” has been in business long enough – since at least 2013 – that it ought to have systems in place to exonerate the innocent by now. Beyond that, the system represents a loss of rights for everyone.
Trial Begins in Musk v. Altman
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Testimony in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman began on April 28, Troy Wolverton reports at the San Francisco Examiner. Musk claims that Altman and Greg Brockman, who co-founded OpenAI with him in 2015, violated a condition of his initial funding that the company would remain a non-profit, and is asking the court to reverse OpenAI’s creation of a for-profit arm and transfer $150 million from the for-profit entity to the non-profit company. Separately, Julian Horsey at Geeky Gadgets reports that OpenAI has changed its definition of “artificial general intelligence” from a computer capable of surpassing human intelligence to a financial benchmark of $100 million in profits. At Vox, Sara Herschander suggests that Musk can lose the case but still get most of what he wants if the information disclosed in testimony leads attorneys general to take another look at the deals that allowed OpenAI to change its status.
Comment: The Musk v. Altman trial is a rare opportunity to get an inside look at some of the thinking and dealing behind these companies.
Research Says LLMs Can’t Become Sentient
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A new paper from Google DeepMind engineer Alexander Lerchner argues that large language models will never be conscious, Emanuel Maiberg reports at 404 Media. Maiberg finds that other researchers on consciousness agree with Lerchner, but say his arguments are already well-established in their disciplines. Near-simultaneously, Robert Booth reports at the Guardian that evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has declared that a couple of days of interacting with Anthropic’s Claude chatbot has convinced him it is sentient.
European Commission Considers Restricting Government Use of US Clouds
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The European Commission is considering proposing restrictions on using US cloud companies to host sensitive government data across EU countries as part of the Tech Sovereignty Package it will introduce on May 27, Kai Nicol-Schwarz reports at CNBC. The restrictions would not apply to private-sector companies.
Rights-To-Voice as Voice Actors Organize to Oppose AI
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Voice AI tools are pushing out voice-over and dubbing artists, whose voices are also being used to train the AIs, raising concerns about the loss of cultural relevance in non-English speaking nations, Rina Chandran reports at Rest of World. Actors and voice actors are beginning to mobilise against the technology. Mexico has banned the practices, and countries such as Brazil and South Korea are considering legislation. Overall, Chandran finds more than 100 movements by creative workers in 25 countries to protect not only voice actors but also “oral culture”.
Cancer Research UK Abandons Open Access
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Cancer Research UK has announced in a blog posting that it will no longer fund open access because doing so is not working to reduce costs, Glyn Moody reports at TechDirt. The problem is that although publishers have embraced hybrid models, intended as a transition between traditional publishing and full open access, the transition has not taken place. Therefore, institutions like CRUK wind up paying for publication without receiving the return benefit of access to the journals. CRUK has signed up to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, and intends to explore alternative methods of evaluating research that will lessen dependence on journal impact factors.
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
AI Browsers Fight for Web Dominance- and plans to tied you up to the text box
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In this article at The Verge, David Pierce considers the potential for AI browsers to usher in a new generational change in how we use the web. Previous browser wars happened because the web was becoming more powerful and more useful; this one, about both how browsers work and what they exist to do. Running Teams more smoothly matters to the Chrome team at Google, but all agentic AI companies likely care about is keeping you tied to the text box you type in.
Comment: As Pierce goes on to warn, the big risk is that control may devolve to companies that don’t care about the open web (though they all say they do).
Beware – AI Enables huge Increase in Recruitment Scams
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Fraudsters are using AI to scam UK job seekers out of money and personal information, Victoria Turk reports at the Guardian, who was nearly fooled by one. The scams dangle high salaries and open positions before offering paid services to improve CVs, training, or, in cases involving jobs abroad, visas. The rise in recruitment scams is substantial; Report Fraud says the number of reports doubled in 2025 from the year before, Lloyds Banking Group reported a 23% rise between January and August 2025, and Monzo customers reported more than 10,000 cases last year.
Entrepreneur Claims AI Platform Enables Restaurateurs
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In this article at TechCrunch, Sarah Perez discusses ecommerce entrepreneur Marc Lore’s new startup, Wonder, which he says offers the almost anyone – influencers, food entrepreneurs – the opportunity to use AI to design and open a restaurant across Wonder’s 70 locations in less than a minute. His platform, Wonder Create, has a library of 700 ingredients, is a vertically integrated dining and delivery platform that lets users create a “programmable cooking platform” that can operate 25 different types of restaurants via largely robotically controlled electric kitchens. The company recently acquired Spice Robotics, which makes automatic bowl-making machines.
Comment: Lore talks of enabling people to experiment with new ideas, but the idea of non-experts running automated restaurants somehow reminds of what Clear Channel did to depersonalize local radio by buying up stations, firing their DJs, and turning them all into top-40 stations with a single DJ running many stations from a remote booth. As if the restaurant business wasn’t hard enough…
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In this article at FT Alphaville, Bryce Elder responds to a New York Times article alleging it had identified Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin, as the computer scientist Adam Back, a claim Back has denied. The reality, Elder says, is that we will likely never reach a consensus around Satoshi’s identity, and trying to “out” him (presumed) is largely a waste of time.
DIARY
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May 18-20, 2026
Berlin, Germany
‘Never gonna give you up’ is the motto of re:publica 26 – and we also see it as an attitude: as a full commitment for tomorrow and a reminder of yesterday. Back to the beginnings of Web 2.0 and the fact that we once enjoyed this internet, an internet where we were able to disagree and still respect each other. re:publica 2026 invites you to not give up (on each other), to reclaim the internet and to shape our future. With courage, hope, fun and a clear message: we stand together,
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May 19-21, 2026
London, UK
The Tech Abuse Conference 2026 will bring together 250 leading international stakeholders – including academics, policymakers, charities, and tech industry leaders – to explore emerging developments and collaborative responses to technology-facilitated gender-based violence and abuse.
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June 4-6, 2026
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A digital public space is essential for a healthy democratic society. During the sixth edition of the PublicSpaces Conference, PublicSpaces and Waag Futurelab will explore how this digital public space can be shaped based on democratic values. This will be done through keynotes by international speakers, panel discussions, workshops, and, of course, the art program. This year, you can follow the program through three different tracks: Digital Autonomy, Public AI, and The Next Socials (in collaboration with New_ Public).
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June 5, 2026
Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Belfast, UK
SOOcon is the UK’s Open Technology Conference covering Open Source Software, Open Hardware, Open Data, Open Standards, and AI Openness.
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August 6-9, 2026
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
DEF CON is one of the oldest continuously running hacker conventions around, and also one of the largest.
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August 6-9, 2026
Vancouver, BC, Canada
A Canadian conference for decentralized social networks and the social web.
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August 14-16, 2026
New York, NY, USA
HOPE 26 will be the seventeenth Hackers On Planet Earth event. This promises to be a memorable event. It is open to all hackers, makers, tinkerers, experimenters, artists, educators and anyone else with an interest in exploring and improving the world we live in, and sharing knowledge with others. HOPE is an all-ages event with multiple simultaneous sessions and many other things to do throughout the weekend.
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October 28-30, 2026
Barcelona, Spain
Mozilla Festival, aka MozFest, is three days of bold conversations, hands-on building, and ideas worth traveling for. This year’s event is partnering with the City of Barcelona and taking part in Open Tech Week — a city-wide celebration of the people shaping a better digital world.
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November 4-6, 2026
Washington, DC, USA
The Privacy + Security Forum brings together the most seasoned thought leaders in the areas of privacy and security law for rigorous deep-dive sessions that deliver hands-on activities and practical takeaways for conference participants.
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November 9-12, 2026
Lisbon, Portugal
Web Summit runs the world’s largest technology events, connecting people and ideas that change the world. Web Summit’s mission has been to create software that enables meaningful connections between the CEOs, founders, investors, media, politicians and cultural figureheads who are reshaping the world
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December 27-30, 2026
Hamburg, Germany
Over the last 40 years, the Chaos Communication Congress has become a Europe-wide renowned event with more than 17,000 participants annually, drawing an ever-growing group of international guests.
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February 9-10, 2027
London, UK
The 2027 State of Open Con will focus on Open Technology including open source software, open hardware, open data, open innovation, open standards, and the value that the open community brings to the UK and its digital economy. Alongside a diverse range of topics, the event promises to include a diverse range of speakers and participants.
